This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented, or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A cellular telecommunications network is a network distributed over land areas divided into cells, each cell being served by at least one fixed-location transceiver or base station. In a cellular telecommunications network, each cell uses a defined set of frequencies of radio spectrum. When joined together, these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area to enable portable transceivers (e.g., mobile communications devices such as phones, walkie-talkies, laptops, tablets, and the like) to communicate with each other.
Each cell is a macrocell that is configured to provide the radio coverage based on the defined set of frequencies via the base station. Radio coverage within each macrocell may have a range of up to several miles. Due to variations in geography (e.g., hills) and the presence of man-made structures (e.g., buildings), radio coverage may not be consistent throughout a macrocell. This inconsistency in radio coverage may be perceived as an inefficient use of the radio spectrum.
To compensate for this inconsistency, small cells are configured to operate within the macrocells, each small cell generally having a range of about 30 feet to about 200 yards. With mobile service providers (MSPs) attempting to support the growth in mobile data traffic, many MSPs are using mobile data off-loading techniques (namely, the transfer of data to lesser used portions of the radio spectrum) to increase efficiency. Thus, small cells are becoming a common element used for data off-loading in current and past generation communication systems, and many mobile service providers (MSPs) see small cells as playing an increasingly important role in the management of more advanced communication systems currently under development. By some estimates, the number of small cells put into service to accommodate mobile telecommunications traffic is expected to double within a few years.